Thursday, January 10, 2013

David Bash's Best of 2012, Part 1.

Just when you thought you were done with Best of 2012 lists, it's time once again to bring you David Bash's year-end lists, which are even more comprehensive than mine. To keep things manageable, today's post is limited to new material, and tomorrow I will follow up with his reissues lists. So without further ado, I turn the floor over to Mr. Bash:

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Hi Everyone,

Here are my lists of favorite albums of 2012. As is my usual custom, I've broken this down into several categories, as I'm just not comfortable ranking unlike entities on one list.

Contemporary Categories

Those marked with an * are LP-only releases and those marked with an ** are download-only releases. I’m hoping I didn’t forget to include some of the download-onlies: my filing system for them isn’t too efficient. 

I’ve probably obtained more albums in 2012 than I have in three or four years, and it definitely showed in the quality level. I’d planned to limit the first category to 100, but it quickly became clear that there were just too many releases I thought were list-worthy, so I kept going. I decided to stop at 125 because I didn’t want to test your patience (as if 100 wouldn’t do that!), but even then there were several albums I was sorry didn’t make the cut.

Disclaimer alert: I’m not a big fan of EPs, as they always seem to leave me wanting more. For this reason, I never seek them out the way I do full-length albums, and 2012 was no exception. A few of them came my way, regardless, and I will list those I particularly enjoyed, in alphabetical order. I realize my rationale for not actively pursuing EPs is anything but…rational…and I will definitely seek to change this in 2013.

The Freddie Steady 5-1000 Miles
The Iveys-Days & Nights
The Jellybricks-Suckers
Nushu-Joystick
Fernando Perdomo-Home Is Wherever You Are
*Sunday Sun-I, II, and III
**Talk Tonight-A Single Day
Two Sheds Jackson-The Collaboration Series, Movement One

Note: some people have combined the three Sunday Sun EPs and ranked the aggregate on their “best album” list. I’m not going to do that because I believe that the cream of these EPs will come out as an album in 2013.